Circular Ecotechnologies for Raw Materials in Urban Energy Infrastructures

This book is the result of extensive searches, comparisons, and the sedimentation of ideas, concepts, and solutions obtained from debates with scientists, collaborators, specialists, and researchers, as well as official meetings with responsible and decision-making political and strategic figures, and participation in international conferences around the globe where ecotechnological science has proven to be technocratic and corporate, above contradictions or intersubjective, political, or immediate interest antagonisms.

In the preface to this work, Professor Ion VERBONCU makes the following remarks: “Rightfully, economist Ilie Ionel CIUCLEA, the author of this work entitled The Basics of Circular Economy: Circular Ecotechnologies for Raw Materials in Urban Energy Infrastructures, observes that the present economy, in a functional and operational context, remains confined to linearity, while management is engaged as both a science and art in ensuring the conceptual and instrumental guidance of individual and collective decision-makers in achieving objectives, through the planning of evolutionary directions for technical-economic survival, still traditionally formulated and formalized in companies.

This volume represents an important scientific effort, at the frontier of contemporary economics and engineering, which is in the process of self-defining its innovative vectors for advancing toward a more sustainable world.”

Chapter I of the work is titled Trends in Establishing the Circular Economy and shows the beginnings of the circular economy’s emergence, particularly the establishment of the dominance of ecotechnologies.

It is observed that, from the perspectives of environmental sustainability affected by waste, scenarios, alternatives, or solutions can only be operationalized in an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary way.

The chapter also introduces and significantly presents the thesis of transforming “consumers” into “users,” signaling the beginning of applying the concept of waste elimination.

Chapter II is titled Impact on the Environmental Capacity of the Ecosystem and contains descriptions of the influence of waste on the quality of environmental factors, launching the concept of returning to the natural cycles of life through the transformation of linear processes and phenomena that generate waste. It is argued that harmful environmental subsidies exist and can be counteracted through consolidated fiscal reform elements.

In Chapter III, titled Circular Ecotechnologization: Re-conceptualizing Waste, research results from environmental enterprises are presented in the context of intereconomicity, organizing the structural managerial elements ensuring the specific operation of environmental enterprises (waste). The original thesis of modular integration of the conception and operationalization of waste treatment for prevention, collection, and recovery is promoted, fundamentally based on the conceptualization and re-conceptualization of waste.

Chapter IV of the work is titled Ecocircular Energy and demonstrates the need for waste to participate in constructing the group of energy raw materials in urban infrastructures. It confirms the idea that energy recycling of municipal waste indeed induces energy participation in the general economic circularization.

Connected to the above conception is the ecocircular economy of mineral and energy resources/reserves, marking a new economic-engineering alignment: that of the circularity of conditionalities for environmental businesses through the material and energy recovery of waste.

In Chapter V of the work, the Circular Economic Model is introduced, based on participation in solving the waste problem, achieving overall sustainability by combining sequential sustainabilities, seeking optimal directions for competitive and innovative advancement of environmental enterprises. In an original way, the chapter proposes replacing the contemporary linear economic model with the circular economic model.

Chapter VI, titled Strategic and Tactical Modeling of Romania’s Economy for Transition to the Circular Economy, refers to the objectivity of strategic investment decision-making in the field of circular waste economy through the modeling of differentiable variety and its associated tension fields.

The elements constituting the proposed strategic and tactical model for aligning Romania with trends in the use of waste in the circular economy are presented, and the significance of resource productivity in a program called “zero waste” in Romania and the EU is clarified. The correlative modeling of the relationship between economic growth and environmental impact is useful in grounding economic growth and highlighting the paths for the manifestation of transgenerational sustainability in the circular economy.

Chapter VII is titled Impact on the Environmental Capacity of the Mining and Urban Ecosystem: A Comparative Case Study of Valea Jiului and Bucharest-Ilfov Region. It mainly reflects the influence of mining and municipal waste on environmental quality, with comparisons made and common aspects, equivalences, and differences highlighted between the two studied areas.

The feasibility and conceptual/model reliability elements for the Integrated Complex for Advanced Energy-Thermal Waste Treatment (CITETA) are assertively linked to harmful environmental subsidies and elements of consolidated fiscal reform in the field.

Chapter VIII, titled Final Considerations: Proposals and Recommendations, presents a synthesis of the scientific contributions to the researched topic discussed in the book. Final conclusions, proposals, and recommendations are advanced. The work includes indexes showing the number of drawings, figures, schemes, mathematical formulas, concepts, expressions, and terms, which are overwhelmingly original creations of the author, covered under scientific copyright.

In essence, this book is profoundly original and can be considered a groundbreaking novelty in the field, a work of significant scientific magnitude and great relevance to the current context.